Inova – First Choice for Damper Testing

High speed damper testing system for air spring damper modules

Inova offers a wide range of damper testing systems for characterisation testing and durability testing of dampers and struts. From standard machines to high speed testing with or without side load.

For motorcycles, cars, trucks and railway applications.

Applications

  • Dynamic characterisation test of dampers
  • Friction test
  • Durability testing with artificial or real road signals
  • Multi damper durability testing
  • Side load application for friction and durability testing
  • Evaluation of tolerance fields and curves
  • Production line integrated testing of dampers
  • Flow test benches for damper valve testing
  • Mobile, truck integrated systems for setup testing beside the proving ground or race track

Software Module Damper Testing

Sample screenshots from Software TC-DAMPER
Shows Force vs. Velocity curves

The demand for comfort and reliability of cars, trucks, motorcycles and trains is continually on the rise. The vehicle suspension system plays a very important role in this. Apart from external loads, there are new active components today. To investigate all of these aspects, it is necessary to prepare for many different types of tests now and anticipate changes and variations in the future.
Inova has more than 30 years experience in designing and manufacturing state of the art servo hydraulic damper test machines. This includes mono tube dampers, twin tube dampers, cabin suspension, yaw dampers, etc. There are also Inova systems available for testing rotary dampers and air spring damper elements.
We are also able to adapt the CAN Bus application inside a testing system to simulate the electrical communications with the vehicle's ECUs and generate the messages for the damper ECU from the test sequence.

  • TC Damper is an add-on module for our standard Software TestControl.
  • TC Damper has an online viewer for the results of different tests. The online result viewer allows to compare hysteresis curves and peak force vs. peak velocity curves even from different dampers
  • TC Damper supports testing of multiple dampers simultaneously. It can be integrated as a monitoring module in a durability test to frequently measure the damper characteristics during the durability loading. If the damper characteristic is changing it can trigger an event to stop the test.
  • TC Damper generates and prints out reports of a test with comprehensive meta data like company logo, damper type, etc.
  • All testing and evaluation parameters of a test can be stored to hard disk for further use.
  • TC Damper provides an online iteration module that optimises the command signals for best accuracy.
  • Evaluation parameters like determination of peak load can be set to absolute maximum, force at displacement zero or force at maximum speed.
  • TC Damper has a mode for measuring the static parameters of a damper (friction, gas force and gas spring rate curve). The gas or spring force function vs. displacement can be used for correction of the dynamic hysteresis and results by subtracting the gas spring force from every force point.

Tiltable Railway Damper Test Rigs

Tiltable Damper Test Rig for railway dampers

Railway dampers are ofted mounted in a horizontal or tilted position. The internal design of these dampers also requires testing in service position.

For that application Inova developed a damper testing machine with a load frame that is adjustable to any position between 0° and 90° deg.

  • Nom. load: 63 kN
  • Tilting: 0° up to 90°
  • Testing velocity: up to 3 m/s
  • Active crosshead clamping
  • Hydraulic crosshead unclamping

Damper Durability Testing

Damper durability test rig for testing 4 dampers simultaniously under side load conditions. Test rig was designed for heavy truck and railway dampers

Damper durability test rig for durability testing of multiple dampers with application of a side load at the dampers bearings.
For this durability test rig there are a lot of options like damper cooling jackets, temperature monitoring, piston rotation devices and many more available. Please ask us about your requirements.